celebrity endorsement

I came across this Avon ad, on the May 14th Sports Illustrated issue, featuring a smiling Derek Jeter. Then ...
... a few pages later, this Movado ad featuring... Derek Jeter (albeit a more serious one).Just thought it was funny. I guess it must be hard not to come up with this after paying big bucks for a celebrity to endorse your brand.

say it again? a dell store?

Dell's Founder and CEO Michael Dell has recently said that "the direct (sales) model has been a revolution, but it's not a religion".
Dell already opened a showroom in Dallas (only to display the models, not to sell them just yet).
All signs seem to indicate that we'll soon see a "Dell Store" out in the street.
This will be an interesting story to watch.

Reference:
Darlin, Damon (2007). Dell's Founder Is Rethinking Direct Sales. The New York Times. April 28, 2007 (here)

japanese pizza anyone?

Fusion cuisine, which gave us Rice Burgers and California Sushi Rolls, has a new representative in Singapore. It's a place called "Oishi Japanese Pizza" (oishi means "tasty, delicious"). Well, it's not exactly new, they've existed for some time, but I only came across one of the outlets this weekend.
They have a novel proposition, Japanese Pizza. There's the 'Teriyaki Chicken Pizza" as well as the "Wasabi Seafood Pizza" and some other combinations. I've never been to the place, so I can't really comment about their pizza. They have several outlets across the island, so I assume business is doing well and the pizza tastes really good. But I'd like to abstract for a moment from the food to comment about the concept...
Planners usually love an oxymoron because they have the potential to create an unexpected and differentiated proposition for a brand. You pick a set of meanings that people are not used to see hand-in-hand and voilà, there's a novelty (well, actually, it's a bit more complex than that, but for all purposes, think Levi's jeans and their contradictory "traditional yet young" concept).
The creation of a new concept is not perfect science however, and apparently there's a degree of contradiction that people are willing to accept. Sometimes, the proposition so defies our logic that there's a danger people will simply reject it.
My first reaction to the term "Japanese Pizza" was of incredulity (they can't be serious). Maybe this is because of my cultural background. Having lived most of my life in São Paulo, which boasts the largest Italian community outside Italy, I'm used to the traditional notion of pizza. One thing is to mix "French" and "Vietnamese" cuisines, the classic "fusion cuisine", quite another is to put together the terms "Japanese" and "pizza" in the same phrase. It's a bit of a stretch, at least for me.
Over time however, there's nothing that proves that these new concepts won't be able to overcome the initial strangeness with which they are received. Maybe this is one those cases where if you keep repeating the concept, eventually it becomes a reality. We might even come to take it for granted some day. And as I said, the pizza might be good. So, like the now ubiquitous California Sushi Roll, the Japanese Pizza might win over the world. Let's wait and see.
Next up: "Squisito Italian Sushi".
Let's brace ourselves.